title

La phonologie
aux concours, et en classe d'anglais

Il est inadmissible qu'on me demande de prononcer
prouffe
un mot écrit proof. - Rémy de Gourmont,
Esthétique de la langue française.


MADE 'MORE SKILLED'... ?

"Only two thirds of French pupils obtain what we consider acceptable results. They are more skilled in certain areas : linguistic knowledge and written comprehension arrive on top; they have difficulties with written expression and with oral comprehension.
Few results were presented of oral expression... "
- ouï à ce
colloque européen.
-



Why isn't 'phonetic' spelled the way it sounds?

A fly and a flea in a flue, / Were caught.
So what did they do? / Said the fly,
"Let us flee!" / Said the flea,
"Let us fly!" / So they flew
through a flaw in
the floor.


MORE OF THOSE


> O mOve, dOve, lOve ÷ ô rOse, ô l'Ove mauve! JS <
÷>  The rain in Spain falls mainly in the plain <÷

Today's English Pronunciation
TIP OF THE DAY

AN ANECDOTE, from Aix-el-CAPES orals

I'm from Germany and have spent the last 6 years in France.
I wondered how obvious my mother tongue was to the examiners - I've got a recognizable German accent in French but
not in English (it's been described as "weird", and I've been asked if I'm from... New Zealand).
Then I remembered that the first thing I had to do was to hand them my German ID card !!!

- Chris, certifiée 2002.

HUMEURS

"Fondamentalement, le rôle du linguiste est de décrire les langues, mais contrairement au grammairien, il n'a pas de visée normative : il ne se préoccupe pas de la "bonne"ou "mauvaise" façon de parler.

La linguistique s'intéresse avant tout au langage humain et à ses occurrences, les langues, et aux facteurs qui les font évoluer.

Le linguiste s'intéresse avant tout à l'oral mais se sert des témoignages de l'écrit pour les recherches historiques. L'écriture n'est qu'un aspect spécifique parmi d'autres..."

- lu dans
Visite guidée des sciences du langage - phonétique, phonologie, morphologie... beau panorama, belle synthèse!

> Of course there is a British accent - within which is the Scottish, Welsh, Irish, Mancunian, Liverpudlian, East Anglian, Cornish, etc., etc.

Just as there is an American accent, within which there is Boston, Midwest, Southern - and all the others I don't know to mention.

I'm sure that there are distinguishing features within the South African English accent, the Australia and New Zealand accents, the Canadian accents, etc. etc.

Just as there is a French accent, within which there is a difference between Britanny, Strasbourg, Provence, Bordeaux, Southern France, etc.

No doubt all other languages have distinctions too.

If you're assuming that the London or Home Counties accent is the ONLY British one, then that's the misconception.

- Lita Arkin

> There is no such thing as a British Accent - there are Welsh , Scottish, London (several!) Mancunian, Birmingham ,Tyneside to name but a few...

One of my teachers used to say : "provided the messages is conveyed clearly, any accent is an extra, musical bonus" all accents are there for us to enjoy.

Why should anyone want to learn the speech sounds for a British accent that is spoken by less than 3% of the population of that country?

And, Britain itself provides only a minority of the English speaking peoples of this world...

Have a look at this very interesting
article !

CAPES, AGREG PHONO HARPIE

"One of the problems of RP is that its association with the ruling elite has meant that it is regarded as being a classist accent.

Aloofness and snobbishness are characteristics often associated with RP speakers..."

- more ? see
RP - Received Pronunciation

A MINE : DADAS

  • PRONONCIATION A L'ORAL des concours - matez les 254 mots-dada des jurés, from Rapp... 1990.

  • Pour bien se prononcer, voir le rapport sur la langue perlée telle qu'ouïe par le jury, catalogue de ses insupportations.

DELTA DE LA THAMES

  • ESTUARY ENGLISH : l'accent de l'actuelle Ruling Class - Prince Andrew speaks it, but Prince Charles doesn't....

DROWN THE EXAM PINK FICHE - study phonetics in London!

Brush up your knowledge of the theoretical side of phonetics, bring yourself up-to-date on new developments.

Do some ear-training and listening practice under the guidance of specialist tutors.

Improve your own English pronunciation on the UCL Summer Course in English Phonetics.

"Some people think of phonetics as difficult and dry. Not us! At UCL we are enthusiastic about the study of pronunciation and how to teach it. We are the world s leading university department for English Phonetics our tradition was established by Daniel Jones, was continued by A.C.Gimson, and is now maintained under J.C.Wells, all of them scholars with a world-wide reputation."

The Course covers all the main aspects of English phonetics in lectures and in practical classes. We deal with both speaking and listening. You will get plenty of practice in pronunciation performance (sounds in isolation and, more importantly, in connected speech) and in auditory discrimination (ear-training).

      • phonemic system (vowels and consonants)
      • segmental analysis (allophonic processes)
      • word stress
      • weakening and coarticulation processes
      • sentence stress (accent, tonal stress)
      • intonation and meaning

Practical groups are kept small (not more than about ten people), streamed according to students level of ability- separate groups for

      • university academics and postgraduates
      • teachers of English as a foreign language
      • undergraduate students of English
      • other professional people.

Particular attention is paid to the difficulties of English pronunciation for learners of EFL; with focus on the phonetic characteristics of connected speech, the ways in which the pronunciation of words in discourse typically differs from their pronunciation in isolation, stress and intonation particularly from the point of view of pragmatics and discourse function.

Whether you are interested in the scientific description of English pronunciation and intonation, want to work on ways of teaching English pronunciation to your pupils, or would mainly like to improve your own performance in spoken English, this course can be of great value and benefit to you.

INFO links about the Summer Course : Teaching staff | Admission requirements | Schedule | Reading | Tuition Fees | Accommodation | Groups | Computing facilities | How to apply

Or, you may prefer to


PHONOLOGY COOKBOOKS

Agreg externe tests requires answers in English...

> J'avais préparé l'épreuve d'agreg externe avec l'ouvrage de Roach, en effet très complet. On peut aussi se servir de l'ouvrage du cned très (trop?) complet et rédigé en anglais.

Pour me simplifier les choses, j'avais commencé par l'ouvrage CAPES (en français) avant de passer à celui d'agreg.

Un conseil : noter les règles et les exceptions au fur et à mesure, s'entraîner avec les épreuves des rapports de jurys, ou anciens devoirs cned.

On trouve aussi différents ouvrages proposant des transcriptions phonétiques.

Ne pas trop multiplier les ouvrages, on finit par tout mélanger...

Feuilleter et prendre celui qui semble le plus clair! ils sont à mon avis tous plus ou moins équivalents mais gare aux méli mélos! - An-Li.

  • Phonetics, J.D. O'Connor, Penguin Books, London.

  • Pronunciation of English, Cruttenden, Gimson, Edward Arnold, London.

  • English Phonetics and Phonology, Peter Roach, Paperback, Cambridge University Press.

  • Phonetics, Peter Roach, H. G. Widdowson (Editor), Paperback, Oxford University Press.

  • Manuel de Survie de phonétique anglaise par Sire Alain de TSEDRI, maître de conférences d'anglais à Univ Brest'agne.

  • Grammaire Orale de l'anglais par Lady Ruth Huart (Ophrys, 14 euros, paru en janvier 2002). Les liens entre certains aspects du système sonore de l'anglais et la construction du sens, en vue d'éclairer les erreurs de compréhension et de production des apprenants.

Cet ouvrage traite successivement de divers aspects de la phonétique anglaise dans le souci constant de lier son et sens, en espérant que les enseignants qui liront cet ouvrage ne seront pas tentés de dire :

"nous n'avons pas le temps de nous occuper de la phonétique", car notre but est de montrer que l'acquisition de la langue passe obligatoirement par l'intégration des phénomènes dont il va être question."

Sommaire
Introduction
Tour d'horizon préliminaire (compréhension orale,
production orale,
production écrite)

Première partie : la prosodie
Chapitre 1 : l'accent, pivot du système
Chapitre 2 : Jeux entre temps forts et temps faibles
(le rythme et ses
incidences)
Chapitre 3 : les schémas intonatifs

Deuxième partie : les sons
Chapitre 1 : confusion entre marqueurs syntaxiques
Chapitre 2 : Les correspondances entre orthographe et
prononciation

Fiches
English Word Stress
Systèmes consonantiques de l'anglais et du français
Voyelles anglaises et françaises. Zones de confusion
Principales correspondances entre graphie et phonie
(voyelles)
Pronociation des voyelles accentuées des mots longs
Activités de découverte de certaines régularités

  • De l'écrit a l'oral et de l'oral à l'ecrit, DESCHAMPS Alain; Professeur à Paris 7 Jussieu, 1994, Paris, Ophrys.

  • Phonologie anglaise, Cours d'agrégation du cned, Paris, Didier-Erudition; DESCHAMPS, DUCHET, FOURNIER, O'NEIL, 1999

  • Mémento de Phonétique Anglaise, Michel GINESY, Nathan Univ.; col. fac. Nombreux exercices, corrigés en fin d'ouvrage. Sont abordés: voyelles, consonnes, accent de mot, prononciation des voyelles, accent de phrase, intonation, accent américain, principaux préfixes... L'auteur est, entre autres, directeur des labo langues à Univ Provence - approche très pragmatique donc.

  • Exercices de Phonétique anglaise, même auteur, même collection.

    Opinion :
    -
    >
    Le Mémento est plus intéressant parce qu'il développe d'abord la théorie. Ensuite, si on veut prolonger et s'exercer, on peut passer aux Exercices. JC.
    -

  • Code de l'anglais oral, Jean-Louis Duchet, de la Saes...

    Opinion :
    -
    >
    "toutes les règles, moult listes, un bon complément de cours, bien pour ce qui est du potassage intensif, voire massif" -Lauric H, agrégé.
    -

  • Anglais, les 1800 mots de base - cassette audio par C. Bouscaren et C. Rivière, Ophrys.

  • Autres manuels recommandés dans les rapp de jury ou par les huiles de ponte :
  • Règles et exercices de prononciation anglaise, Louis Guierre, Paris : Armand Colin Longman (1987)
  • L'intonation de l'anglais, de A. Nicaise & M. Gray, Paris : Nathan (1998)

  • Sans oublier les incontournables dicos de D. Jones et de J.C. Wells (édition 2000 chez Longman).
  • APACHE AWARD pour son opus "Enseigner la prononciation anglaise"" à M. Jean BROSSARD, émérite inspecteur, didacticien érudit, vétéran-formateur d'agrégat interne au CNED). Tout pour passer à l'action: un guide exhaustif, clair, bourré de suggestions pratiques. Bordas, 1995.
  • Chomsky : the only way to strengthen language skills is : to speak English with : native speakers...

  • 10 ways to... keep students speaking English.

  • Evaluation de l'anglais oral en classe.

  • Agreg Page's listening activities section: slow, fast, dialogues, exercices de prononciation, TV, radio, dictée, lecture, just a ...phew!

  • PROSODY, SONG, et... PRL par Alain Nowak: lire l'épatante approche d'un agrégé enseignant en classes préparatoires, à la section Music & Song.

  • The functions of prosody are many and fascinating - chunking, focus, pitch...

  • Pedagogical Phonetics and phonology.

  • Phonics and decoding - Guiding kids to discover spelling rules, spelling strategies...

  • Onset and rime, phonological awareness - as soon as children begin to learn to read they do begin to adopt a phonological approach to the task, based on the phonological units which make most sense to them.

  • Speech Internet Dictionary (SID) - technical terms used in phonetics, phonology, speech... ex.: Dorsal ["dO:sl=] Articulated with the body of the the tongue (the dorsum), that is with the front or back of the tongue and excluding the tip, blade and root. Diphthong ["dIfTON] A complex vowel which changes its quality within a single syllable...

  • Tomatis methods : since our ears are attuned to the frequencies of our native tongue, are said to accelerate the learning of foreign languages... In Guadelo, call 0590830147.
.
  • Tongue twisters - "Just think, that sphinx has a sphincter that stinks!" - and more.

  • Onomatopeia : words used to describe sounds. Japanese kids must master katakana, mainly used to write words borrowed from other languages, usually from American English, also from Holland, Portugal, China...

Dictionary of English Pronunciation by Pr Wells, Longman.

"Pronunciation is not an intrinsic component of the dictionary...

Modern English, however, displays no such consistency in sound and spelling, and so a dictionary of English must devote considerable attention to the pronunciation of the language.

The English lexicon contains numerous eye rhymes such as love, move, and rove, words which do not sound alike despite their similar spellings. On the other hand, it also contains rhyming words such as breeze, cheese, ease, frieze, and sleaze whose rhymes are all spelled differently." -
Webster Pronunciation Guide.
-

.
English? a jumble of contradictions!

Letters may suggest the wrong sound, like O in woman, U in busy, GH in cough; letters can be silent, like B in doubt or S in island. Consonants vary from single to double, like F in afraid but FF in affray, or T in omit but TT in omitted. Endings vary unpredictably : compare beggAR, teachER, actOR...»

Jargon phonétique de base.
.
.



PRONOUNCIATION HINTS



I take it you already know

Of TOUGH and BOUGH and COUGH and DOUGH,

Others may stumble but not you,

On HICCOUGH, THOROUGH, LAUGH and THROUGH,

Well done! And now you wish perhaps,

To learn of less familiar traps?

Beware of HEARD, a dreadful word

That looks like BEARD and sounds like BIRD.

And DEAD: it's said like BED, not BEAD.

For goodness sake don't call it DEED!

Watch out for MEAT and GREAT and THREAT

(They rhyme with SUITE and STRAIGHT and DEBT).

A moth is not a moth in MOTHER

Nor BOTH in BOTHER, BROTH in BROTHER,

And HERE is not a match for THERE

Nor DEAR and FEAR for BEAR and PEAR,

Just look them up - and GOOSE and CHOOSE,

And CORK and WORK, and CARD and WARD,

And FONT and FRONT and WORD and SWORD,

And DO and GO and THWART and CART.

Come, come, I've hardly made a start!

A dreadful language ? Man alive!

I'd mastered it when I was five!!

- author unknown, can you or anyone
help trace the Himherthem for proper credit ?

--

.

-
dictionary

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AGREG PAGE - first posting December 1996

© Jean S. Sahaï, 1996-2011
Guadeloupe, Antilles Françaises.

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